1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a printing system for printing a plurality of print jobs, the printing system comprising a receiving unit for receiving the plurality of print jobs, a controller for controlling a scheduling process and a printing process of the plurality of print jobs, a print unit for printing the plurality of print jobs, a plurality of supply holders for holding supply material needed to print the plurality of print jobs, and a user interface for communicating to the operator scheduled supply operator actions for printing the plurality of print jobs, each of the scheduled supply operator actions linked to one of the plurality of supply holders.
By the term printing system, a system is meant that has a print function, for example a printer, a copier, a multi-functional, a roll-to-roll printer, a roll-to-sheet printer, a cut sheet printer, a flatbed printer, a wide-format printer, a relief printer or a 3D printer.
A supply material may be a print media material for printing a digital image thereupon. Such a print media material may be paper, plastic, overhead film, transparent material, textile, hard board, wood, etc. The print media material may be in the form of sheets or rolls. The supply material input holder for the print media material may be an input holder for sheets or a roll, for example a tray, a roll holder, etc. The printed print media material is led to at least one output holder.
A supply material may be an image recording material to be deposited on the print media material. Such an image recording material may be toner, metal, ink pearls, ink dreads, ink or other fluidal material. The image recording material may be ejected or adhered in the form of drops or particles. The supply material holder for the image recording material may be a toner container, such as a toner bottle, an ink container for ink pearls, an ink cartridge, an ink bag, etc.
A supply material may be a finishing material used when finishing the printed product. Such a finishing material may be a staple, a paper clip, a binder, glue, or other finishing material. The supply material holder for the finishing material may be a staple holder, a paper clip holder, a binder holder, a glue syringe, etc.
The term holder is equivalent with the term tray in case of a media input holder or a media output holder.
The printing system may be an inkjet printing system, an electro-graphical printing system, a nano-particle printing system, etc. The printing system may be suitable for printing on sheets of print media material, on rolls of print media material, or printing 3D objects.
The present invention further relates to a method for printing a plurality of print jobs by a printing system.
2. Description of Background Art
In prior art printing systems, print jobs submitted to the printing system are scheduled for a predetermined time period. An example of a schedule is described in patent U.S. Pat. No. 8,953,997, which schedule has rows of scheduled print jobs per print media material to be used in the planned period. From this schedule, it is difficult to optimize a period of unattended printing of the printing system, i.e. how long an operator can stay away from the printing system without a stop of the printing system due to a lack of supply material in the supply holders.